Witness History

On 16 January 1988, the world’s largest passenger ship, Sovereign of the Seas, set sail on her maiden voyage around the Caribbean. She carried more than 2,600 passengers and had five restaurants, nine bars, four pools and a casino. Rachel Naylor speaks to her captain, Tor Stangeland. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you t...

In the 1950s, the transformation of the sleepy little town of Benidorm began when Pedro Zaragoza was appointed mayor. He started by getting pipes built to allow running water, then went on to pass a decree which allowed women to wear bikinis. Now, every year millions of tourists arrive in Benidorm, on Spain’s Costa Blanca. This episode was produced by Simon Watts in 2018, using recordings of Pedro...

In 1969, Antonio Enríquez Savignac was given the go-ahead to transform a secluded Mexican island into a world-beating tourist destination. The technocrat believed tourism was a cost effective solution for fixing the country's faltering economy. He was given funding from the Mexican federal government to create infrastructure on the island, including an airport. The resort would be called Cancún. M...

In 1955, a small Icelandic airline, Loftleioir Icelandic, slashed the cost of flying across the Atlantic. For the first time, thousands of young Americans were able to afford air travel to Europe on what became known as the 'Hippie Express.' In 2017, Mike Lanchin spoke to Edda Helgason, whose father, Sigurdur Helgason, launched the ambitious scheme, and Hans Indridason, who ran the company's sales...

In 1971, an architect called Chu Ming Silveira created Brazil's iconic egg-shaped telephone booth, Orelhão. More than 50,000 of the booths were installed across Brazil and the design was so successful that other countries decided to use it. Chu Ming was born in China and moved over to Brazil with her family in 1949, following the end of the Chinese Civil War. At a time when not many architects wer...

In 1980, 123 men were killed when the Alexander L. Kielland platform capsized in the North Sea oil fields. It was Norway's biggest industrial disaster and led to a range of safety improvements for those working in the country’s oil and gas sector. Lars Bevanger speaks to survivor Harry Vike, who spent 10 hours in a lifeboat waiting to be rescued, and his wife Grete, who was waiting for a call to f...

In 1984, a 21-year-old Irish shopworker refused to serve a customer buying two South African grapefruits. Mary Manning was suspended from the Dunnes store in Dublin, and ten of her colleagues walked out alongside her in protest. It was the start of a strike that lasted almost three years, and ended when Ireland became the first western country to impose a complete ban of South African imports. Why...

In 2014, Boko Haram militants drove into Gwoza in north-east Nigeria and began an assault that would leave hundreds of people dead. Ruoyah, who was just 14, hid in her house for eight hours under continuous fire. She says when she finally opened the door to leave her house she says: "There were corpses everywhere, we even saw the corpse of our neighbour in our front door." Ruoyah managed to escape...

In April 1999 Nato bombed the Serbian state TV station in Belgrade, killing 16 people. It was part of a military campaign to force Serbia to withdraw from Kosovo. Mike Lanchin has been speaking to one of the survivors, Dragan Šuković, a TV technician, who was working at the station that night. This programme was first broadcast in 2015. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness Hist...

In 2008, Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest at America's occupation of Iraq. George W Bush had been giving a joint press conference in Baghdad with Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki at the time. He was in his final months as president as Barack Obama was due to take over. As he threw the first shoe, Muntadhar yelled: “Here is yo...

Charles Norman Shay was a field medic in the United States Army when he landed on the Normandy beach codenamed Omaha on D-Day. On June 6, 1944, the US 1st Infantry Division faced a bombardment of machine gun fire from the German soldiers on surrounding cliffs. More than 1,700 men died on Omaha alone. Aged just 19, Charles risked his own life to save his comrades from drowning, for which he was awa...

In 1944, a young Irishwoman called Maureen Flavin drew up a weather report that helped change the course of World War Two. Maureen was working at a post office in Blacksod on the far west coast of Ireland. Her duties included recording rainfall, wind speeds, temperature and air pressure. On 3 June, she sent one of her hourly reports to Dublin, unaware that the figures were being passed on to the A...

In 1984, Russian engineer Alexey Pajitnov invented the popular computer game Tetris. But it was not until American businessman Henk Rogers joined him that the game became an all-time favourite in video game consoles across the world. Chloe Hadjimatheou spoke to both of them about how the idea of the game originated and the challenges of exporting it from the Soviet Union. This programme was first...

In 2008, panda-mania hit Taiwan when China gifted the country two giant pandas. This practice known as ‘panda diplomacy’ is thought to date back as far as the 7th Century. Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan flew into Taiwan and became instant celebrities. Eve Chen, curator of the Giant Panda House at Taipei Zoo says: “They were extremely cute and adorable. You could call them like the handsome and the beauty...

Forty years ago, a Hollywood director, some tech revolutionaries and a group of London skinheads created a commercial that would rock the advertising world. Based on George Orwell’s dystopic novel ‘1984’, and launched in the same year, the ad was like nothing that had been seen before. But its road to being shown was rocky, and the beleaguered advert almost never made it air. Mike Murray was Apple...

Flint was once one of the richest cities in the United States. But in the 1980s, it was badly affected by the downturn in car manufacturing and by 2014 it was nearly bankrupt. To save money, the city switched its water supply away from Lake Huron to its own Flint River, but state officials failed to treat the river water properly. As a result lead, a powerful neurotoxin, was released into the drin...

A warning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners - this programme contains the names and voices of people who have died. In 1971, Neville Bonner became the first Aboriginal person to become a member of the Australian Parliament. In 1979, he was named Australian of the Year in recognition of his work fighting for the rights of indigenous Australians - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islan...

Ninety years ago, the first surviving quintuplets were born in a small village in northern Canada. The Dionnes grew up in a specially-adapted nursery where millions of people could visit them. But, years later they struggled to adapt to life back with their parents which led to a fight for compensation. This programme was produced and presented by Simon Watts in 2012 using BBC archive. Eye-witness...

In 1964, João Goulart, the president of Brazil, was overthrown in a military coup. In the repression which followed, hundreds of people were disappeared or killed, and many more detained and tortured. Carlos Lamarca was a captain who deserted the army and joined in the armed struggle against the military regime. He was shot dead in 1971. His friend and fellow fighter, João Salgado Lopes, tells Vic...

In 1984, Nike signed rookie basketball player Michael Jordan and created a shoe in his name – the Air Jordan. The unprecedented deal would change sports marketing forever. Former executive Sonny Vaccaro was the man who persuaded his bosses to put all their marketing budget on one untried player. He became convinced of Michael’s talent after seeing him make the winning shot in a college game. He te...

In 2001, more than 700 pairs of Imelda Marcos’s shoes were put on display at the Marikina Shoe Museum in the Philippines. The wife of the dictator President Ferdinand Marcos, became famous for buying shoes, while millions of Filipinos were living in poverty. It’s thought she had in around 3,000 pairs. Ella Rule has been through the archive to tell the story of Imelda and her shoes. Eye-witness acc...

How the Dassler brothers created two global sportswear firms. In 1948, Adi and Rudi Dassler who lived in a small German town fell out. They went on to set up Adidas and Puma. Adi Dassler played a crucial role in West Germany's victory in the 1954 World Cup with his game-changing footwear. In 2022, Reena Stanton-Sharma spoke to Adi's daughter Sigi Dassler, who remembers her dad’s obsession with spo...

In 1962, a new brand of footwear launched that would become one of Brazil’s most successful and best-known exports: Havaianas. As the country’s footwear industry started to expand, one company wanted to make something that was comfortable, inexpensive, and ideal for South America's long hot summers. Havaianas soon became the favourite of the working class because of their affordability. Fast forwa...

Bata was a Czech company which pioneered assembly line shoemaking and sold affordable footwear around the world. The factory near London was opened in 1933 and it became key to its expansion. In 2018, Dina Newman spoke to one of its senior engineers, Mick Pinion, about the company's remarkable history, including how it sold millions of shoes in Africa and Asia. Eye-witness accounts brought to life...

In 2001, the American Ana Montes, who was working for the United States Defense Intelligence Agency was arrested for espionage. Although the FBI knew that there was a spy they didn't know who it was. The Cubans always referred to Ana by a man's name. Former FBI agent, Pete Lapp, tells Gill Kearsley the fascinating story of how he and his team tracked down and arrested Ana, who is known as ‘Queen o...